Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur

Monorail and Chinese Temple, Kuala Lumpur. Pic by Rachel.

The narrative structure of this blog is getting a little complicated. We're only now starting to get caught up with the photo uploads from India, but since I don't want every post here to be about things that happened a month ago, I'll try to bring it back to the present tense in between flashbacks.

At the moment we're with Rachel's parents in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands, enjoying the cooler temperatures and jungle hikes (though today's expedition was more a series of grueling climbs than a hike). We met Alice and Chris in Kuala Lumpur, which, after Singapore, is Southeast Asia's most successful city. It's also one of the youngest, having been founded as a tin miners' supply town only in the mid-19th century. It has shiny world-class skyscrapers and a shiny world-class public transportation system(including, Seattleites take note, a working monorail line), shared by the city's definitive Malaysian mix of Malay, Chinese, and Indian populations.

Above: Petronas Towers, symbol of ultra-modern KL

Alice, who once worked with students from all over Asia in her position with the University of St. Andrews' English as a Second Language department, noted that the Malaysian students she knew tended to be unimpressed with historic buildings, much preferring sparkling examples of modernity - not necessarily surprising given that Malaysia has done extraordinarily well in the modern, post-colonial age.

Still, that attitude may explain why the Heritage Station Hotel, where we stayed, has been allowed to deteriorate from a colonial-era five-star hotel into a frayed and underused budget facility. The rooms are still very comfortable, and it's wonderfully atmospheric - housed in KL's old Moorish-style colonial train station - but it's clearly unappreciated in Kuala Lumpur's glossy new world. I wonder if that will change in time.

Above: Heritage Station Hotel

By the way, Kuala Lumpur apparently means "muddy confluence." Here's the confluence in question, though it's more concrete than mud these days:



UPDATE: I wasn't able to get this post online yesterday when I wrote it. We're no longer in the Cameron Highlands - we are now in Melaka, which is gorgeous, and which I'll write about later.